The young English are fine animals, full of blood, and when they have no wars to breathe their riotous valors in, they seek for travels as dangerous as war, diving into Maelstroms; swimming Hellesponts; wading up the snowy Himmaleh; hunting lion, rhinoceros, elephant, in South Africa; gypsying with Borrow in Spain and Algiers; riding alligators in South America with Waterton; utilizing Bedouin, Sheik and Pacha, with Layard; yachting among the icebergs of Lancaster Sound; peeping into craters on the equator; or running on the creases of Malays in Borneo.
The excess of virility has the same importance in general history as in private and industrial life. Strong race or strong individual rests at last on natural forces, which are best in the savage, who, like the beasts around him, is still in reception of the milk from the teats of Nature. The people lean on this, and the mob is not quite so bad an argument as we sometimes say, for it has this good side.
But when you espouse an Orleans party, or a Bourbon or a Montalembert party, or any other but an organic party, though you mean well, you have a personality instead of a principle, which will inevitably drag you into a corner. The best anecdotes of this force are to be had from savage life, in explorers, soldiers and buccaneers. But who cares for fallings-out of assassins and fights of bears or grindings of icebergs?
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Physical force has no value where there is nothing else. Snow in snow-banks, fire in volanoes and solfataras is cheap. The luxury of ice is in tropical countries and midsummer days.
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The luxury of fire is to have a little on our hearth; and of electricity, not volleys of the charged cloud, but the manageable stream on the battery-wires. So of spirit, or energy; the rests or remains of it in the civil and moral man are worth all the cannibals in the Pacific. Everything good in nature and the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astringency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.
The triumphs of peace have been in some proximity to war. Whilst the hand was still familiar with the sword-hilt, whilst the habits of the camp were still visible in the port and complexion of the gentleman, his intellectual power culminated: The affirmative class monopolize the homage of mankind. They originate and execute all the great feats. What a force was coiled up in the skull of Napoleon! Of the sixty thousand men making his army at Eylau, it seems some thirty thousand were thieves and burglars.
The men whom in peaceful communities we hold if we can with iron at their legs, in prisons, under the muskets of sentinels,—this man dealt with hand to hand, dragged them to their duty, and won his victories by their bayonets. This aboriginal might gives a surprising pleasure when it appears under conditions of supreme refinement, as in the proficients in high art. When Michel Angelo was forced to paint the Sistine Chapel in fresco, of which art he knew nothing, he went down into the Pope's gardens behind the Vatican, and with a shovel dug out ochres, red and yellow, mixed them with glue and water with his own hands, and having after many trials at last suited himself, climbed his ladders, and painted away, week after week, month after month, the sibyls and prophets.
He surpassed his successors in rough vigor, as much as in purity of intellect and refinement. Michel was wont to draw his figures first in skeleton, then to clothe them with flesh, and lastly to drape them. There is no way to success in our art but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day. Success goes thus invariably with a certain plus or positive power: And though a man cannot return into his mother's womb and be born with new amounts of vivacity, yet there are two economies which are the best succedanea which the case admits.
The first is the stopping off decisively our miscellaneous activity and concentrating our force on one or a few points; as the gardener, by severe pruning, forces the sap of the tree into one or two vigorous limbs, instead of suffering it to spindle into a sheaf of twigs. Everything is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more and drives us home to add one stroke of faithful work. Friends, books, pictures, lower duties, talents, flatteries, hopes,—all are distractions which cause oscillations in our giddy balloon, and make a good poise and a straight course impossible.
You must elect your work; you shall take what your brain can, and drop all the rest. Only so can that amount of vital force accumulate which can make the step from knowing to doing. Many an artist, lacking this, lacks all; he sees the masculine Angelo or Cellini with despair. He too is up to nature and the First Cause in his thought. But the spasm to collect and swing his whole being into one act, he has not. The poet Campbell said that "a man accustomed to work, was equal to any achievement he resolved on, and that for himself, necessity, not inspiration, was the prompter of his muse.
One of the high anecdotes of the world is the reply of Newton to the inquiry "how he had been able to achieve his discoveries? He declined all invitations to banquets, and all gay assemblies and company.
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During the whole period of his administration he never dined at the table of a friend. It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune, and when you have got it, it requires ten times as much wit to keep it. If I were to listen to all the projects proposed to me, I should ruin myself very soon. Stick to one business, young man. Be brewer, and banker, and merchant, and manufacturer, and you will soon be in the Gazette. Many men are knowing, many are apprehensive and tenacious, but they do not rush to a decision. But in our flowing affairs a decision must be made,—the best, if you can, but any is better than none.
There are twenty ways of going to a point, and one is the shortest; but set out at once on one. A man who has that presence of mind which can bring to him on the instant all he knows, is worth for action a dozen men who know as much but can only bring it to light slowly. The good Speaker in the House is not the man who knows the theory of parliamentary tactics, but the man who decides off-hand. The good judge is not he who does hair-splitting justice to every allegation, but who, aiming at substantial justice, rules something intelligible for the guidance of suitors.
Nature - Conduct of Life Quotes
The good lawyer is not the man who has an eye to every side and angle of contingency, and qualifies all his qualifications, but who throws himself on your part so heartily that he can get you out of a scrape. There are cases where little can be said, and much must be done. The second substitute for temperament is drill, the power of use and routine. The hack is a better roadster than the Arab barb. In chemistry, the galvanic stream, slow but continuous, is equal in power to the electric spark, and is, in our arts, a better agent.
So in human action, against the spasm of energy we offset the continuity of drill. We spread the same amount of force over much time, instead of condensing it into a moment. At West Point, Colonel Buford, the chief engineer, pounded with a hammer on the trunnions of a cannon until he broke them off. He fired a piece of ordnance some hundred times in swift succession, until it burst.
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Now which stroke broke the trunnion? Which blast burst the piece? Basil Hall likes to show that the worst regular troops will beat the best volunteers. A course of mobs is good practice for orators. All the great speakers were bad speakers at first. Stumping it through England for seven years made Cobden a consummate debater.
Stumping it through New England for twice seven trained Wendell Phillips. The way to learn German is to read the same dozen pages over and over a hundred times, till you know every word and particle in them and can pronounce and repeat them by heart. No genius can recite a ballad at first reading so well as mediocrity can at the fifteenth or twentieth reading.
O'Shaughnessy learns to cook it to a nicety, the host learns to carve it, and the guests are well served. Emerson says that, while fine souls are empowering and inspiring, fine society is excluding and deadening. Similarly, he does not wish "to concede anything to 'the masses', but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them" They are "unripe, and have not yet come to themselves, do not yet know their opinion" Individualism, to Emerson, is crucial to intellectual and historical achievements.
One of the most central lessons to learn is "the good of evil" Antagonism is vital to nature. In both the private and social spheres, many great achievements "are brought about by discreditable means" Emerson concludes that humans are indebted to their vices As for the development of character, it is essential to "know the realities of human life" Also, friends "to whom we can say what we cannot say to ourselves," as well as people "who shall make us do what we can" , are essential.
Emerson closes the essay on an encouraging note by saying, "life brings to each his task, and whatever art you select, … begin at the beginning, proceed in order, step by step" His concluding remarks resonate with many of his other writings: Emerson next turns to Beauty, a topic he dealt with in Nature in Looking at beauty from different angles, Emerson works toward solving the problem of defining beauty by exploring examples, counterexamples, and qualities of beauty.
In this last essay on Beauty, Emerson is less systematic than in his three-section investigation of beauty in Nature. First comes a criticism of science for moving far away "from its objects! Defining beauty in order to encourage a return to affection, Emerson writes, "Beauty is the form under which the intellect prefers to study the world. All privilege is that of beauty; for there are many beauties; as, of general nature, of the human face and form, of manners, of brain, or method, moral beauty, or beauty of the soul. Then ensues a study of beauty through examples and explanations, "We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its ends; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.
It is the most enduring quality and the most ascending quality.
Investigating beauty in nature, society, rhetoric, art, architecture, and women, he comments "The line of beauty is the result of perfect economy" and "Beauty is the quality which makes to endure" The comparison of beauty to ugliness brings Emerson to the essence of his argument, "Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful. The conclusion begs for a broader and more integrated understanding of the world:.
The last passage in the essay is "the perception of Plato , that globe and universe are rude and carly expressions of an all-dissolving Unity, —the first stair on the scale to the temple of the Mind. The final essay of the book, 'Illusions', is more clearly structured than 'Beauty'. In a closer examination of sensory perception, Emerson writes "Our conversation with Nature is not just what it seems" and "[the] senses interfere everywhere and mix their own structure with all they report of it.
Turning to illusions in society, Emerson writes: Society does not love its unmaskers. Here, he offers an aphorism: Emerson continues to examine specific illusions, most notably marriage as a happy illusion: He then suggests options for dealing with illusions: Emerson turns back to a spiritual connection at the conclusion of the essay and the collection: There is no chance, and no anarchy, in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.
The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: The conduct of life [Vol. 6]
The young mortal enters the hall of the firmament: On the instant, and incessantly, fall snow-storms of illusions. He fancies himself in a vast crowd which sways this way and that, and whose movement and doings he must obey: The mad crowd drives hither and thither, now furiously commanding this thing to be done, now that.
What is he that he should resist their will, and think or act for himself Every moment, new changes, and new showers of deceptions, to baffle and distract him. From a long line of religious leaders, Emerson became the minister of the Second Church Unitarian in He left the church in because of profound differences in interpretation and doubts about church doctrine. He visited England and met with British writers and philosophers.
It was during this first excursion abroad that Emerson formulated his ideas for Self-Reliance. He returned to the United States in and settled in Concord, Massachusetts. He began lecturing in Boston. His first book, Nature , published anonymously, detailed his belief and has come to be regarded as his most significant original work on the essence of his philosophy of transcendentalism.